How To Become a Level 80 Twitter Ninja

Q. So it's kind of like Facebook--a bunch of status updates about what people had for breakfast?

A. It can be, if you follow people who use it like Facebook to post status-y updates about everyday minutiae. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But Twitter can also be used to share links, track trends, follow breaking news, share images, get customer service, ask for advice, market yourself or your business, and a lot more. If all you’re getting is breakfast posts, you need to follow some more interesting users.

Q. How am I supposed to keep up with all these tweets?

A. You’re not. Depending on how many people you follow and how often you check Twitter, your timeline could have hundreds of posts. Luckily, 140 characters don’t take long to read. And since the stream is active all the time, you can drop in and out at your leisure and not worry about what you missed. Don’t think of your Twitter timeline like an RSS reader or an email inbox, where items stack up in a pile until you get to them. Think of it as a stream that’s always flowing, and go sit by it when you get a minute.

A. If you want to find people talking about a specific topic right now, check out search.twitter.com, or use an application like TweetDeck to search for all new tweets on a keyword. If someone’s tweet catches your eye, click their name to read their other tweets and check out their profile. Or go to WeFollow.com to find people by topic or NearbyTweets.com to find people near your location.

TweetDeck can run a search on any keyword--great for finding new friends or tracking mentions of your brand.

Q. What's that star at the end of tweets?

A. That lets you mark the tweet as one of your favorites. Star a funny or poignant tweet to remember it later, or star a tweet containing a link that you don’t have time to read at the moment.

Click Favorites in your sidebar to see all the tweets you've starred.

Q. What's with all the gibberish, like RT and @ and # everywhere?

A. RT means retweet, so RT @MacLife signals that someone’s reposting a tweet originally made by MacLife. If you see @MacLife at the beginning of a tweet, it’s probably a reply to a tweet from MacLife. If @MacLife is in the middle of a tweet, that’s usually a mention, like a shout-out. Twitter.com and Twitter apps let users see their replies and mentions, so it’s an easy way to have a conversation or find out when people are talking about you. The # is a hashtag, used for trends or memes like #followfriday (when users suggest other users for people to follow, every Friday). You can click a word that starts with a hashtag to see all the tweets that include it.

San Diego Comic-Con attendees used the #sdcc hashtag.

Q. If I reply to a tweet, can anyone see it?

A. Not anymore. You’ll see replies (posts starting with @username) to you from your followers in your main timeline. If someone you don’t follow replies to one of your tweets, it shows up in the @username tab of your sidebar on Twitter.com and in Twitter apps. If someone you follow replies to a tweet by another person you follow, you’ll see that reply in your timeline. But if they reply to a tweet by someone you don’t follow, Twitter assumes you’re not interested, and you won’t see that. (You used to be able to see all replies by anyone you’re following with an option in Settings > Notices, but that option was disabled in May.)

So to summarize, your timeline will contain replies to you from those you’re following and replies to others, if you’re following both people.

Q. How do I share links or photos?

A. You can just type links into a new post, but you’ll need to include the full URL (including html://) for it to be clickable. Since Twitter caps updates at 140 characters, most people use a service like Bit.ly or TinyURL.com to shorten long links. Each of those sites offers a “bookmarklet” you can drag to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar for one-click shortening. Then when the page you want to share is open in your browser, just click the bookmarklet to launch a new tab containing your shortened link, which you can copy and paste into your Twitter update.

Upload an image to TwitPic.com, and you'll get a link you can post to Twitter.

Photos aren’t supported directly by Twitter, but you can upload them to a site like TwitPic.com or YFrog.com and post links to them directly to Twitter. Most Twitter apps include a way to upload pictures via TwitPic or YFrog, saving you the step of needing to visit one of those sites.

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